Research Area:  Metaheuristic Computing

Abstract:

The susceptibility of the PV array towards partial shading has raised a major reliability concern for efficient power generation. The partial shading forces the arrays to generate lower power along with forming non-convex curves causing complicated operation of power tracking algorithms. Hence, to reduce the losses, various conventional configurations and reconfiguration techniques exist with vulnerabilities in terms of reliable power enhancement and complexity. In this paper, a highly reliable, less complex, and fast array reconfiguration based on the Dragonfly algorithm (DA) optimization with a higher power enhancement capability, lower computational time, and hasty convergence is proposed for unwanted shading losses reduction in arrays. The effectiveness of the proposed reconfiguration is evaluated against conventional configurations and three pre-existing reconfiguration techniques under various artificial shading cases via power generation, losses, and efficiencies using simulation and experimental analysis for 3 × 3 and 9 × 9 arrays. From the conducted analysis, it has been established that the DA reconfiguration has 22%, 10.10%, 15.36%, 5.85%, 2.95%, 2.55%, and 1.07% higher power generation than the conventional configurations, electrical reconfiguration, SD-PAR, Sudoku, GA, PSO, and EAR respectively with reduced switches counts.

Keywords:  
susceptibility
reliability
partial shading
non-convex curves
tracking algorithms
reliable
less complex
fast array reconfiguration

Author(s) Name:  Belqasem Aljafari, Priya Ranjan Satpathy, Sudhakar Babu Thanikanti

Publisher name:  Elsevier

DOI:  10.1016/j.energy.2022.124795

Volume Information:  volume 257

Paper Link:   https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S036054422201698X